The Poets, The Nerds, and The Suits

Back In The Day

In the ancient world, there were three roles of influence that tended to engage one another… the Prophets, the Priests, and the Kings.

These three danced a tenuous dance together… at times at great odds with each other, often over accountability issues, and at other times in aid of one another.   One might say it was a ‘love/hate relationship’… one that at times ended with the Prophets losing their heads to the Kings (and the Priests keeping their distance)!

Today's ‘Prophets, Priests, & Kings’

In our world – the modern world of technology and innovation – we too have three key roles of influence that dance the same tenuous dance.   This dance, however, is about business innovation.   We call these three roles the Poets, the Nerds, and the Suits.¹   The Poets, Nerds, and Suits are the Prophets, Priests, and Kings of the business world.   Let's give each their due.

The Poets are our Designers, Artists, Musicians, Philosophers, Theologians, and other Visionaries.   They are our Prophets… they create the ideas.   Some are also Makers… they make the things that incarnate those ideas.   And some are Professors… they profess the ideas worth sharing.

The Nerds are our Engineers, Technologists, and Coders.   They are our Priests… they keep the order of the way things need to be.

The Suits are our Business People… Investors and Executives.   They are our Kings… they get to decide which ideas live and which ideas die, and, ultimately, where the money gets spent.

When the Poets, the Nerds, and the Suits all learn to work well together, great innovation can occur, and often great business results happen… ones that truly make a difference in our world.   Of course, the reality is that sometimes the Poets have to ‘lose their heads’ to the Suits.   This happens whenever the ideas they're passionate about are found to be incapable of producing the outcomes and results needed to produce real business impact, and thus generate revenues and profits.   Unfortunate, but that's reality.

Incubation Zones — Where These Three Roles Play Well Together

Interestingly, we find that certain places in the world have cultures that help encourage these three roles to work well together.

In the U.S., these are places like New York, Boston, San Francisco, Austin, and Seattle… and events like SXSW for example.

By contrast, in places where the culture favors one role over the others and fails to nourish all three, the results tend to be generally suboptimal.   We get ho-hum businesses that miss the mark in one way or another… selling offerings that either don't deserve to exist, wonky products that create frustrating experiences, or offerings that have little or no grounding in market realities.   None of those scenarios are suitable for long term sustainable business success.

Renaissance People

Every now and then, we'll encounter a so-called ‘Renaissance’ person — those rare souls who occupy more than one of these roles.   Like the Biblical king-priest figure Melchizedek, they may be a Poet-Suit (think Steve Jobs), or a Nerd-Suit (think Bill Gates), or a Poet-Nerd-Suit (think Elon Musk).

These multifaceted souls can have both a light side and a dark side.   The darkness happens when there is little or no external perspective and little or no accountability.   Fortunately, the best of these people are great listeners… unpretentious and able to integrate the voices of many into a rational perspective, and willing to subject themselves to scrutiny for proper accountability.   The light side – the greatness – happens when being such a multifaceted soul serendipitously leads to absolute ‘business genius’.   When this happens, the human race is moved forward in great strides that otherwise would not occur.

But… the reality is that there simply aren't enough of these geniuses to go around.   And so most organizations are best served by figuring out how to create structures and environments that bring these three roles together into a productive, if not necessarily smooth, dance of work.   The end result is often still a ton of creative, innovative energy that yields the sorts of great products, services, and experiences the world needs in order to move forward.

Three Tasks For Us

Lastly, each one of us should do three things.

First, we need to examine ourselves to figure out – at the point in our lives at which we find ourselves – which of these roles we fill… Prophet, Priest, or King — and then embrace that role.

Second, we should each seek out people who are filling the other roles so that together we can enter into a serendipitous dance and create something worthy of a legacy.

Third, and final, we should each recognize that over time we all change — and so we may enter into our professional lives as Poets or Prophets and emerge in the end as Kings.   And along the way we may pass back and forth between any of these roles any number of times.

The real point is to engage in and enjoy the creative dance.   That's the beauty of meaningful business innovation.

¹ Some in the startup community have referred to these three roles as the Designer, the Hacker, and the Hustler — along with undoubtedly other incarnations.

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